flightless

Back to work and back to life and back to all the other stuff I tried not to think about over the long weekend. While I sat with an empty notebook… goofing off on social media… and avoiding making any to-do lists. I’m not sure if the absence of my usual manic list making/brain dumpingstorming is good or not good. Usually, it means I’m feeling stuck. I don’t particularly feel stuck. I feel calm. But that can’t be “right” because I’ve played the same scenario over in my head each morning for 4 days. And THAT is never good:

“When will we have kids, do ya think?” (one of his co-workers had just had a baby, they were our age)

“We’re not.”

“Ever?”

“No. Never.”

“But why? What if one of us dies? I would be sad not to have something of you with me.”

“We just can’t. They’ll be like you – with your problems.”

[insert HUGE red flag here]

This was an actual conversation between my ex-husband and I not too long before he left. Now, I know these are shitty things to remember and play over in your head and not healthy to be revisiting (for 4 days). It’s odd that they don’t make me feel angry – probably because the relationship was dead and buried so long ago – and also because him being shitty was more about the fact that he was cheating on me and getting ready to disappear (some would use the word “flee”). He may have been attempting to pick a fight, provoke an episode… force me to give him an exit. I will never know. I’m not even sure which problems he was worried I would pass on to this neverbaby. I assume it’s all of them. We didn’t fight about this. First, I was stunned that he had said what he said without hesitation. Second, that HUGE red flag was waving and I knew for certain: This person does not love me.

That was it. That was that moment. Not all the other HORRIBLE moments and TERRIBLE words he said to me before then (THE most terrible things anyone has ever said to me – ever).

That one moment was when I knew.

Maybe I’ve never figured it out before now? And why do I feel calm about this? I should clarify that “calm” does not mean numb. I know the difference and this isn’t numb. Typing this out has made me a bit teary, I won’t lie. The tears are not for loss of love, or the neverbaby, they are from empathy toward the person I was. That poor battered and bruised 20-something who watched her whole “world” crash and burn. And he was the world to her even when she was nothing (less than that) to him. She thought they’d get old together, that his cruelty might melt into something gentler, that he’d accept her as she was and apologize for all the shit he did when they were young and that he really was proud of her. And she would forgive him because she never knew how to hold on to anger.

I forgave him anyway. It’s not my habit to dwell on these things, but that moment was replaying in my head the last few mornings so I thought it best to get it out and now I have and we’ll have to see how tomorrow morning goes.